smellious's Profile

I have to recommend Great Wall Szechuan on 14th St NW (between Q and Church Streets).

It has by FAR the best Chinese-American food I have found in DC, I reiterate - BY FAR.

Chinatown is chock full of places that use terrible ingrediants and capitalize on being located in Chinatown. Their dumplings are TERRIBLE. Give me a good dumpling from Chinatown and I will pretty much fall over in shock.

The flavors at Great Wall pop in your mouth, the portions are reasonable, the dishes are just gloppy enough and the fact that the place is always packed indicates that its a neighborhood secret that is slowly getting leaked!

I haven't been to Asia Nine but it looks pretty delicious. It fries me that all over NYC you can walk into a Pan-Asian place and find the $10 lunch special with appetizer included, but in DC somehow its ONLY pretentious (and quite frankly crappy) sandwich shops.

Has anyone had the Zengo lunch menu? I like the concept of the bento boxes and don't really know where else I could get something like this.

Some working professional friends and I all are centered arond the Metro Center, Chinatown, McPhereson area for the next few months and would like suggestions of great places to have a casual lunch. We're not expensing this (unfortunately!) so we'd like to keep costs down, quality up and only hit places with seating, if possible.

Thus far we've been to:

Devon and Blakely (delicious but limited seating)Chop't (How many times can I eat this in one week?)Mix't Greens (Slow slow lines, less options than chop't,but I like the real silverware)Cheff Geoffs (Getting pricey but nice lunch specials)M&S Grill (Yetch, I had TERRIBNLE fish tacos)Cosi (I hate this place.. it all tastes the same)Au Bon Pain (Limited to no seating, bland)Ollies (Greasy, but delicious)Pret a Manger (Colleague doesn't like refridgerator case sandwiches)

Any suggestions? We would be up for ridiculous steal lunch specials, and I have to have faith that SOMEWHERE in DC there is a cheap and delicious Chinese lunch!